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THE 


SCHOOL   CITY 


WILLIAM  TORREY  HARRIS,  LL.D. 

Commissioner  or  Education 


SYRACUSE  p 

C.  W.  BARDEEN,  PUBLISHER 


The  following   article    appeared   in   The 
School  Bulletin  for  March,   1906. 


(3) 


THE  SCHOOL  CITY 

The  "School  City"  proposes  that  the  chil- 
dren shall  enter  a  civic  organization  and 
govern  themselves  just  as  adults  do  in  a 
municipal  organization.  In  order  to  have  a 
true  basis  for  a  civic   organization   in   the 

C^  mental  make  up  of  the  pupils  there  should 
'    be  on  their  part  a  considerable  development 

'vj  of  insight  into  institutions,  their  sacredness 
and  their  function  in  civilization.  There 
should  be  an  insight  into  the  substantiality  of 
the  family  and  also  into  civil  society  as  based 


6  THE    SCHOOL    f  ITY 

Oil  the  division  of  labor  and  the  specializa- 
tion of  economic  functions  in  the  social 
whole. 

Children  in  school  are  still  within  the 
family  and  are  just  coming  to  survey  the 
social  world  outside  of  the  family.  They 
are  not  out  of  the  family  and  in  civil  society 
far  enough  to  separate  themselves  from  the 
standpoint  of  the  family ;  therefore  what  they 
do  is  tinged  with  family  obedience  and  is 
mostly  a  matter  of  use  and  wont  or  even  of 
mere  imitation  and  there  is  not  possible  as 
yet  any  true  independence. 


THE    SCHOOL    CITY 


This  being  the  case,  all  "  school  cities  " 
will  show  a  constant  tendency  to  decadence; 
that  is  to  say  the  history  of  a  "  school  city  " 
will  be  full  of  lapses  into  the  evils  which 
come  in  adult  human  society  from  the 
presence  among  us  of  people  who  lack  thrift, 
or  who  lack  business  honesty,  or  who  lack 
worldly  wisdom,  in  short  of  the  civic  weak- 
lings who  furnish  us  our  slum  population 
— our  paupers  and  our  criminals.  If  I 
wanted  a  child  to  be  taught  the  tricks  of  the 
demagogue  and  the  devices  of  the  unscrupu- 
lous politicians,  I  should  by  all  means  place 


8  THE    SCHOOL    CITY 

him  in  a  "  school  city  "  as  organized  by  Mr. 
Gill's  plan,  and  expect  that  the  child  would 
learn  how  to  bribe  his  superiors  and  to 
undervalue  honest  and  truthful  straightfor- 
wardness of  conduct. 

When  a  man  becomes  the  head  of  a  family 
and  has,  on  the  one  hand  to  exercise  a  par- 
ent's supervision  over  children  and  knows 
how  important  it  is  for  these  children  to  be 
trained  in  obedience  to  a  wise  patriarchal 
government  which  gives  way  gradually  to 
self-government  on  the  part  of  the  child  in 
so  far  as  he  comes   to  get  insight  into  the 


THE   SCHOOL    CITY  9 

difference  between  his  own  caprices  and  the 
moral  order — and  when  the  man  acts  as  a 
citizen  in  the  community,  subordinating 
himself  to  the  civil  laws,  and  at  the  same 
time  pursues  a  useful  vocation  in  society, 
following  some  occupation  thriftily  and  lay- 
ing up  a  competency  for  himself  while  he 
conscientiously  produces  something  valuable 
for  his  community  and  the  world  market, 
then  he  comes  to  a  basis  where  he  takes 
civic  order  seriously.  I  think  that  before 
this  period  it  is  only  a  child's  play  at  best, 
and  that  the  child's  play  of  civic^lifej  is  not 


10  THE    SCHOOL    riTT 

a  good  form  in  wliich  to  develop  the  real 
civic  spirit. 

Cunning  and  trickery,  bribery  and  secret 
conspiracy  cannot  well  be  kept  out  of  the 
management  of  the  "  school  city  "  because 
while  the  members  of  the  "  school  city  "  are 
all  members  of  families,  they  are  not  yet  in 
sight  of  the  great  universal  necessity  of  the 
State,  grounded  on  the  indispensable  need 
for  the  protection  to  life  and  property.  I'ro- 
tection  of  life  and  property  is  not  yet  in 
sight  of  the  school  organization.  The  school 
is  an  organization  for  purposes  of  instruction 


THE   SCHOOL   CITY  ll 

of  the  mind  and  training  of  the  will,  but  not 
so  serious  a  matter  as  the  protection  of  life 
and  property  ;  and  to  expect  that  within  the 
family  there  shall  develop  the  serious  atti- 
tude of  the  citizen  is  a  fatal  mistake,  in  my 
mind. 

The  point  that  I  have  urged  on  Mr.  Gill 
is  that  the  "  school  city  "  can  be  supported 
and  freed  from  its  dangers  only  by  the  dom- 
inating will  of  the  teacher  of  the  school  who 
contrives  to  secure  at  every  turn  the  adop- 
tion of  his  own  council  in  place  of  sugges- 
tions made  by  the  pupils  themselves.      The 


H  THE   SCHOOL   CITY 

teacher  contrives  to  make  the  pupils  follow 
his  counsels  while  they  think  they  are  fol- 
lowing tlieir  own  counsels,  and  he  has  to 
check  and  hold  back  those  who  undertake  to 
carry  out  logically  their  own  narrow  views, 
based  upon  the  relation  between  the  mem- 
bers of  the  family  rather  than  upon  the  re- 
lation of  one  free  citizen  to  another  in  the 
realm  of  productive  industry.  In  pedagogy 
we  distinguish  between  corrective  punish- 
ment which  is  proper  for  children  as  chil- 
dren, and  retributive  punishment  which  be- 
longs to  the  state  and  is  the  return  of  his 


THE   SCHOOL    CITY 


13 


deed  in  a  symbolical  manner  upon  the  citi- 
zen who  commits  a  crime. 

There  are  two  kinds  of  teachers  as  regards 
school  discipline.  One  teacher  keeps  the 
children  under  a  severe  restraint  by.a  spirit- 
ual power  which  I  compare  to  the  power  of 
the  hypnotizer.  I  have  seen  teachers  who 
could  hypnotize,  as  it  were,  the  children  in- 
to a  most  vivid  consciousness  of  the  teacher's 
will,  subordinating  their  own  likes  and  dis- 
likes to  the  teacher,  sometimes  in  dread  of 
the  teacher's  power  and  sometimes  out  of 
awe  and  respect  or  even  affection   for   the 


i4  THE  srnooi,  city 

personality  of  the  teaclier.  1  do  not  con- 
sider the  discipline  of  such  teachers  lo  be 
a  health-giving  effect  in  a  school.  I  prefer 
the  other  kind  of  teacher  who  does  not  tyran- 
nize, so  to  speak,  over  the  child's  mind  either 
by  fear  or  by  alfection  and  does  not  insist 
on  the  self-effacement  of  the  child  in  the 
presence  of  the  school.  The  teacher  should 
encourage  step  by  step  self-activity  on  the 
part  of  the  pupil,  but  he  should  not  go  so 
far  as  to  undertake  to  make  the  child  as- 
sume dramatically  the  role  of  free  citizen, 
for  this  is  to  learn  to  play  a  part,  conform- 


THE   SCHOOL   CITY  15 

ing  one's  self  to  an  external  model  as  an  ideal. 
The  empty  declamation  of  a  speech  by  Chat- 
ham or  Burke  or  Daniel  Webster,  dramati- 
cally adopting  the  supposed  manner  and 
reproducing  the  situation,  is  not  a  process 
of  cultivating  the  true  individuality  of  the 
child  but  of  cultivating  only  the  ability  to 
imitate  and  to  play  a  role  for  the  sake  of 
producing  an  appearance  rather  than  the 
reality  of  earnestness  and  wisdom. 

All  phases  of  self-government  in  schools, 
such  for  instance  as  self -reporting  and  civic 
self-government,  require   the^  utmost   vigi- 


16  THE   SCHOOL   CITY 

lance  of  a  teacher  wlio  posaeases  what  I 
call,  for  want  of  a  better  name,  this 
hypnotic  power  or  weight  of  immediate 
personal  influence  sufficient  to  sway  his 
pupils,  and  such  a  teacher  cannot  loosen 
for  a  moment  his  hold  over  his  pupils 
without  letting  into  the  organization  these 
evil  influences  which  I  have  described 
above.  The  teacher  who  gets  very  much 
interested  in  the  literary  and  scientific 
progress  of  his  pupils  is  very  apt  to  relax 
his  hold  on  the  organization  of  his  school, 
especially     in     cases     where     the     organ- 


THE    SCHOOL    CITY  17 

ization  is  so  complex  as  it  is  iu  the  "  school 
city  ",  where  the  teacher  secures  his  control 
not  by  immediate  authority  but  by  author- 
ity vested  in  elected  civil  officers.  The 
teacher  is  obliged  to  secure  the  realization  of 
his  ideals  of  organization  but  at  the  same 
time  to  make  them  seem  to  emanate  from 
the  free  impulses  and  reasonable  devices  of 
the  pupils  themselves. 

I  should  not  wish  to  have  one  of  my 
grandchildren  sent  to  a  school  where  the 
teacher  swayed  the  pupils  by  a  sort  of  hyp- 
notic power — caused  the  children  to  behave 


18  Tin-:  SCHOOL  city 

like  puppets,  suppressing  ail  their  sponta- 
neous inpulses  out  of  respect  for  the 
authority  of  the  teacher.  It  would  be  a 
step  toward  making  those  children  spiritual 
parasites.  It  is  the  opposite  of  the  spirit  of 
Froebel,  but  still  I  have  known  many  kin- 
dergarten teachers  who  ruled  by  this  hyp- 
notic power.  Bronson  Alcott,  a  man  of 
great  wisdom  in  education,  used  to  say  that 
the  true  spiritual  preacher  appeals  to  the 
freedom  in  the  child  and  holds  back  those 
he  teaches  from  becoming  his  disciples;  he 
wishes  them  to  find  an  utterance  to    their 


THE    SCHOOL    CITY  19 

■own  individuality  and  not  a  mere  imitative 
or  dramatic  representation  of  his  own  ideas 
and  actions. 


J^i^ 


Ac  V    lA. 


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I.os  .\iii;«-l<-s 

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